March 29, 2016

More Worries For Pat Toomey (Who's Still Not Doing His Job)

The most recent Franklin & Marshall poll shows that 30 percent of Pennsylvania's registered voters have a favorable opinion of Toomey, 35 percent have an unfavorable one and 34 percent are undecided or don't know. The share of people with unfavorable opinions of Toomey is up from 23 percent a year ago and 13 percent five years ago, shortly after he joined the Senate, the poll shows.

And:

Political experts point to a number of factors for Toomey's rising unfavorability.

“It's mostly the result of criticism he's received on a number of issues over a fairly long period of time. These things build up over time,” [pollster G. Terry Madonna, director of Franklin & Marshall College's Center for Politics and Public Affairs] said.

Toomey's stance on the Supreme Court issue has generated criticism and placed him out of step with 62 percent of Pennsylvania's registered voters, the poll said. About 35 percent agree with Toomey that the Senate should wait to hold hearings on President Obama's nominee, Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C.

If the 2016 Democratic primary election for U.S. SENATOR were being held today and
the candidates included
(rotated)
John Fetterman, Katie McGinty,
Joe Sestak, and Joe Vodvarka
would you vote for John Fetterman, Katie McGi
nty, Joe Sestak, Joe Vodvarka, some other
candidate, or aren't you sure how you
would vote?

And here's what they found:

Sestak - 31%

McGinty - 14%

Fetterman - 7%

Vodvarka - 0%

I am guessing that pleases some of the folks who read this blog and displeases some others.

This bad news for Toomey has made the rounds of some of the state's other news sources:

U.S. Senator Pat Toomey’s support has plummeted statewide on the heels of his saying the next president should nominate the Supreme Court Justice, not Barack Obama.

More than 30 percent of Pennsylvania registered voters have a “somewhat” or “strongly” unfavorable opinion of Toomey, a Republican, according to the latest Franklin & Marshall College poll. The same poll shows 29 percent of voters have a favorable opinion of the senator, while 12 percent of those questioned are undecided.

"Plummet" might be too strong of a word (same with the verb "wilts" which was used in the headline of the piece) but the point to be made is the same: Toomey's obstruction of the constitutional process to appoint a new Supreme Court justice is beginning to erode his support among Pennsylvania voters.